Hello again,


Due to an unforeseen set of circumstances, I have been unable to post anything about the game of bridge yet. I apologize, but I seem to have been taken ill of late. This past weekend, along with several days from last week, have seen me curled up on the couch coughing and wheezing. The rabbits attempted to cure me, but of their proposed solutions (including standing on my head, chasing my tail, drinking from the far side of a glass, and hiding under the bed), I opted out and just took a nap. I'm beginning to feel better now, if a little tired still. I shall endeavor to post about this historical game when I have the brain cells to do it justice. In short, I may say bridge is played very similar to 4 handed pinochle, but with a regular deck. Each team must make a bid, and try to make their bid or they lose points and pay a penalty. One of the biggest differences is points are calculated very differently.


In other news, my master is almost done with his networking course, and hopes to finish by Wednesday afternoon. I'm excited for him, because that means more time for walks, and playing fetch. He recently went to the store and picked up a trunk-load of "rabbit food", that is carrot sticks, fruit, veggies and the like. Tasty to be sure, but a smidge low on the sugar side if you ask me. oh well, we can't all have cookies all the time I suppose.


Since this is one of those blogs where I try to add a kernel of knowledge with each post, here's todays: the east coast is having a winter blizzard (named hurricane Juno), and is buried in at least 2 feet of snow. The west coast had some amazing days at the beach over the weekend, highs around 55-60s,and the weather around here foggy as normal. :P


Well, that's all for now, I think I am going to find a blanket, book and some tea while I wait for my masters to return home. Oh, and if I'm quiet, the bunnies will stay asleep.

Games and lengthy posts

Game Time!

 

After countless hours of watching Poirot and similar shows, it may be time to have a quick lesson on two of the classic card games at parties: Bridge, and Pinochle.  Oddly enough, these games are very rarely played at the same time. Pinochle players tend to stick with Pinochle, and Bridge players stick with Bridge. Below, we will run through the basic rules of each game, that way no matter which party you attend, you will feel right at home. :D

Enjoy!

Pinochle:

Let’s start with this fun little game. The basic rules are simple enough, but learning the skill and expected play styles may take a little longer. The first thing you need to know about pinochle, is that it is played with a special deck of cards. A pinochle deck has only 48 cards, and contains cards 9-Ace in each suit (doubled, there are duplicates of every card). The dealer shuffles the cards, and deals out 12 to each player. A typical game is played either 4 rounds, or until one team gets a total of 150 points.

Pinochle is broken into 3 stages: the bidding stage, the melding stage, and the playing stage.

Bidding Stage:

If you have ever played hearts, spades, or rook, the bidding stage is similar. You bid on how many points you and your partner can make by the end of the round. The highest bidding team win the bid, and must make at least that many points by the end of the round, or they “go set” that is, gain no points for the round, and go negative the number of points they bid. The bid starts at 25 points.

Melding Stage:

Once players are finished bidding, the team with the winning bid calls trump (I will get to this in a minute) and is allowed to pass exactly 4 cards facedown from one player to the other. The player collects these cards, and selects 4 to send back. The player who won the bid is allowed to announce which suit is trump. His partner will then try to pass him trump cards, aces, and other helpful cards. Then the player will build his hand, and pass back whatever he doesn’t need to his teammate. Then, each player at the table lays down any sets of cards in their hand which will gain their team points. I have attached a list of available sets below:

 

Card Combination	Description	Single	Double
A,K,Q,J,10 in trump	Run	15	150
K,Q in trump	Marriage	4	8
K,Q in suit	Marriage	2	4
9 in trump	9	1	2
A,A,A,A (One Ace in every suit)	Aces Around	10	100
K,K,K,K	Kings Around	8	80
Q,Q,Q,Q	Queens Around	6	60
J,J,J,J	Jacks Around	4	40
Q of spades and J of diamonds	Pinochle	4	30

 

As you can see, if you are able to collect a double, that is, 2 of any card combination, this significantly increases your points.

Playing Stage:

Once all players have recorded their points so far, the players all pick up their hands and play out the cards. Whichever team won the bid is allowed to pick the trump suit for the round. They usually pick the suit they are dealt strongest in. A trump card will always beat a non-trump card in play. When playing cards, players must abide by the following rules:

A player must follow the suit led unless he or she cannot.

When a player cannot follow suit, they must play a trump card unless they are out of trump (when a player is out of trump, and the led suit, they may play whatever card they want).

When following suit, a player must play a higher card if they can.

Highest card in suit takes the trick (unless trump was played, in which case highest trump on the table takes the trick).

When the play is over, each team counts their point cards, and adds this to their meld points. Points for cards are as follows:

Ace: 1 point

King: 1 point

10: 1 point

Every other card: 0 points

Last trick is worth 1 point

The total points is what the team made for the round.*

*If a team melded points, and then took no tricks during the round, they lose their melded points.

Tips for playing:

Once you learn the game, you may notice little nuances in the game that you are expected to know. Sort of like going to a poker game, and then forgetting to put up the blind. Here is a quick list of expectations for a game of pinochle:

When bidding, if you are dealt no cards in a suit (or just the 9 in suit) let your partner know by giving him or her a jump bid. For example, if you opened the bidding, start at 26. This lets your partner know you may not have the cards they need.

When passing cards, if your partner took the bid, pass him trump first, then aces, then 9 in trump if you have it. Remember, your goal is to help him make his run.

Pinochle: a double pinochle is worth 30 points, and very valuable. If your partner calls either diamonds or spades as his trump suit, pass him any J of diamonds or Q of spades you have.

Counting cards is okay in this game. It is expected you are calculating where cards are likely to be. Counting cards can be tricky at first. There are 2 of every card in the deck. Start with your hand. What do you have? What do you need for a run? Is your partner likely to have what you need? Then look around the table as players meld their cards. Does another player have a lot of aces on the table? Remember that and use it to draw out his or her aces early in the game to take control of the end game.

I think that’s about it for pinochle. This turned out to be along post, so I will post Bridge separately.

Thawing out (early spring?)

*yawn* Good Morning,

Welcome to the New Year! Hmm, has anything changed yet? *looks around* Nope, doesn’t seem like it. J Still the same grass to lie on (except when its wet), still the same sun behind the clouds (we think, who knows?). All the same, I thought 2014 would never end. It seemed jumbled up with 2013 for some reason. 2015 is now officially its own year. My only resolutions? Spend more time having fun, take life slow, or as slow as possible in our fast-paced life, and to finally beat the bunnies at parchisee! Haha, well the last one doesn’t seem so do-able – they cheat dontcha know ;) Maybe I can beat them at chess…

*stretch* spring is coming a little early this year it seems. I hope it will not be another hot summer, last year was too hot, and so was the summer before. If it gets too hot, I may wander over to the movies. This year promises a large number of interesting titles including star wars among others.

I’m also looking into planning a camping trip, or a couple of trips this spring, and hopefully a trip to the beach. My masters look like they need a vacation. :P

Things in general are going pretty well overall however, I can’t complain.

Enjoy your Tuesday! I think I am going to take a nap now.

Santa

Woof! Merry Christmas Eve!


You may be wondering why I have been posting science posts lately. Well the answer's simple: we are endeavoring to find out how Santa is able to visit every home on earth in a single night. Based on the laws of physics as we know them, logically there is a way he can accomplish this. However, first and foremost, we must take into account a certain degree of magic. Magic does not always line up with science, but we will do our best to co-exist the two. :)


So, what degree of magic are we talking about? We know Santa uses 8 (sometimes 9) Reindeer to pull his sleigh. These reindeer are able to fly, and can pull the sleigh along at incredible heights and speeds. Furthermore, they can pull a fair amount of weight. The bag of toys in the back of the sleigh is usually filled to the brim! Of course, the toyshop, and elves and the lights of the North Pole also are magic, but we are only looking at the sleigh at the moment. There is conjecture on whether the sleigh has any magical properties, but we will assume it is a regular sleigh.


Lets talk numbers. How many presents are there to deliver? There are about 7.2 billion people in the world, and about 320 million people in the United States. Approximately 30% of them are children. Now, there are quite a few people Santa may not deliver presents to as well, for example, Buddhists, Hindu's, or Muslims who don't celebrate Christmas. Some of them do, mind you, but a lot of them don't.
7.2 Billion - 1.6b Muslims - 1b Hindus - .4b Buddhists = 4.2 Billion. Lets take 30% of this number (the children) = 1.26 Billion. Assuming 1 present for each child, this is still a lot of presents! Lets round this down to 1 Billion, both for sanity's sake, and because I have been over-estimating things.


Okay, so we have 1 Billion presents. How much do they weigh? Well, size and weigh can vary wildly. from a deck of playing cards to a bicycle! Lets take some average guesses. For small toys, a good weight may be about 1-3 pounds (action figures, games, etc). For average toys, lets say 5 pounds. For large toys, 15 pounds. Naturally, most items will be in the average category. We'll do a standard weight distributed bell curve, and assign 68 percent to average toys, and 16 percent to small toys, and 16 percent to large toys.
Small toys: .32b pounds
Average toys: 3.4b pounds
Large toys: 2.4b pounds
So the entire pile of presents will weigh about 6.1 Billion pounds or so. This is beginning to sound like a lot of presents! Let's assume the sleigh will hold 2400 pounds of presents per trip (yes, Santa will be making multiple trips). If this is the case, it will take him about 2.5 million trips. Even with our physics in play, this seems a little extravagant. But wait! Isn't Santa's bag magic? Why yes it is! He pulls all sorts of things out of that bag that clearly might not fit in there otherwise. Let's say it can reduce size and weight by 100 times. Dividing our number by 100, that means Santa will need to make 25,416 trips. Still a lot of trips, but much more manageable.


Now lets look at the physics lessons we have been talking about:
When talking about dimensions, we mentioned that time can be construed as a 4rth dimension, that is to say, we travel through time (usually ahead in time, but I digress). Our second article was about relativity, that is to say, can we travel forward or backwards through time at varying rates? Technically, yes, but this is difficult to impossible to travel backwards in time, but we can slow our passage through time by reaching close to relativistic speeds. Sadly, this doesn't help us, because we want to slow earth's time, to make the night longer for Santa to deliver the presents. Well how about wormholes? This is where we can get some help. Wormholes are mostly theoretical, and take enormous amounts of energy. But they can set up a waypoint, so to speak, where one can travel ahead in time, go into the wormhole, and come back out in the past when the wormhole was created. And Santa has magic. He creates two of these wormholes using solar energy, and the northern lights to make one at the North Pole, and one at the South pole. He is able to use these to make one trip, then drop in the south pole wormhole, and appear again in the North Pole wormhole to make the second trip, and so on and so forth. This is also why Santa may appear to be in many places at once, because he is traversing the same span of time multiple times. Using this approach, it would take him roughly 5.7 years to finish one Christmas run! That is one busy guy!


Merry Christmas Everyone!
Woof!


ps: sorry about the delay in posting this, hope you enjoy anyway!